7 ms·

The Case for $320,000 Teachers

37 points by physcab 16y ago

jdminhbg 16y ago
"Still, school administrators can do more than they’re doing. They can pay their best teachers more, as Pittsburgh soon will, and give them the support they deserve. Administrators can fire more of their worst teachers, as Michelle Rhee, the Washington schools chancellor, did last week." There is a gigantic elephant in that room with "NEA" painted on its hide.
- jbooth 16y ago
  Very true. But as long as the NEA and the unions are the only ones who stick up for teachers while everyone else wants to cut their salaries and assign them more work in the name of "eliminating government waste" (while leaving earmarks and military funding untouched, of course..) Anyways as long as they're the only one that actually sticks up for teachers then they'll have a place in the world. You just have to smack them around once in a while when they're totally wrong about something, like their resistance to the Obama admin's effort's at merit pay. EDIT: From the article, kindergarten being the most predictive grade is fascinating.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - yummyfajitas 16y ago
    ...everyone else wants to cut their salaries and assign them more work in the name of "eliminating government waste" (while leaving earmarks and military funding untouched, of course..) Argue with straw men much?
    - jbooth 16y ago
      Go take a look at a municipal budget over the last 5 years, pretty much anywhere in the US. It's not a straw man. State and local budgets have been strapped since 2002-2003 or so, all the way through the supposed "boom", and it got worse after the collapse. The stimulus bill, for example -- it was like 40% tax cuts, had a bunch of earmarks, but the local aid that would've helped teachers was what got stripped out in order to get the last couple votes. Congress can reduce the deficit by cutting state aid. States can balance their budgets by cutting local aid. School districts get stuck with the lack of funding from their congressman's admirable devotion to balanced budgets. In between voting for putting 2 wars and a $50 million senior center for his district on the credit card. I'm just giving you the truth - you can accept it or not.
      - yummyfajitas 16y ago
        I don't dispute that congress is a bunch of crooks. I dispute the term "everyone else" - most people who criticize teachers for being overpaid and underworked (which is uncommon) also criticize pork barrel spending.
        jbooth 16y ago
        Well, first off, people who criticize teachers for being overpaid and underworked are just plain wrong. Teachers have a really hard job and it's one of the top 5 most important jobs in our whole society. Regarding my original point, that nobody stands up for teachers.. I mean look at that stimulus bill. Teacher pay makes up a huge portion and often an outright majority of local budgets. When local budgets are crunched, and it's either lay off teachers or raise taxes, guess which way the local populace usually goes? Everyone wants something for nothing.
        yummyfajitas 16y ago
        Teachers are certainly underworked relative to other professionals, even for the 9-10 months that school is in session. http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf They are also overpaid, particularly if you account for the value of all their fringe benefits, including summer vacation, tenure, defined benefit pensions, early retirement and gold-plated medical care (all of which are very expensive). In fact, they are usually paid right on the money if you look at salary alone - a 45 year old teacher with 20 years experience in NYC gets $83-95k/year (equivalent to $99-114k/year if they worked all year). That's not bad even for NYC. http://schools.nyc.gov/Offices/DHR/TeacherPrincipalSchoolProfessionals/Salary/Salary+Step+and+Differential+Schedules.htm http://schools.nyc.gov/Offices/DHR/TeacherPrincipalSchoolPro... It gets even worse when you realize teachers tend to be low human capital individuals, at least compared to other college grads. Most likely they would be below average if they pursued other professions: http://www.ets.org/Media/Tests/GRE/pdf/gre_0809_interpretingscores.pdf http://www.ets.org/Media/Tests/GRE/pdf/gre_0809_interpreting...
        16y ago
  - Empact 16y ago
    How do you explain that while the NEA supports the firing teachers based on age, rather than merit - ejecting good young teachers while retaining old bad ones - while it's innovative charter schools that can go right ahead in paying teachers highly in hopes of attracting the best teachers: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/05/education/05charter.html?_r=1&hpw http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/05/education/05charter.html?_... Who is sticking up for teachers there? The NEA, which supports age over talent? Or the charter, which is focused on attracting and retaining good teachers?
    - jbooth 16y ago
      Did you read the comment you're responding to? I said they were wrong sometimes, specifically in regards to merit pay. I said that, in black and white, right there on the page. Or gray, because it's being downmodded because people who don't like the implications of it. Anyways, yeah. Charter schools. Whole other bag of worms. I like them in theory, in practice the way they're funded usually tends to be crooked -- quick example, in the town I was a Selectman in, a charter school started up. It cost us about 7k/year to educate a student, round numbers. Cost the charter school, say, 9k. Every student that left us for the charter school, 9k was taken from our budget and assigned to theirs. To add insult to injury, we actually had to pay to bus the kids there on top of it, plus additional unitemized strains on the police budget, etc. That's not exactly kosher.
      - jbooth 16y ago
        Oh, and as far as "why" they support age vs merit (in other words, "last in first out", youngest teachers go first in a layoff), it's because that's how all the union contracts are structured, and that's wrong, but NEA is a product of the unions. Not defending, just explaining. I'd love to throw the NEA under the bus - the problem is, nobody else stands up for teachers.
- sprout 16y ago
  The problem with this debate is that if you speak to most teachers, they agree wholeheartedly that procedures need to be in place to fire bad teachers. The issue is that they are very hostile to the educational administration establishment that has decided test scores are the ideal measure by which to base this. Test scores, while they are good at measuring some aspects of learning, ultimately tie teachers' hands and force them to teach from only state-approved curricula. Especially scary if you live in a state where Thomas Jefferson has been struck from the books because the board of education has an ideology to push, and is unconcerned with teaching truth. So if you ask most teachers, they support this sort of thing totally, and therefore the unions would too. But only if they receive assurances that standardized testing - an enemy of free thought - is a minimally important part of the evaluation system. Peer review is the ideal. Now, this obviously still brings charges of cronyism, and it certainly will create cliques of teachers, but only rarely cliques of bad teachers. And I think it's worth knowing that we pass a widely varied bunch of knowledge onto our children, instead of only those facts that are deemed convenient and useful by powerful cliques in the state legislatures.
  - lutorm 16y ago
    This is the real issue. I have absolutely no problem with rewarding good teachers and sanctioning bad ones. The crucial question is how good and bad will be defined. Standardized testing is absolutely not the way to do it.
    - richieb 16y ago
      Perhaps we should ask the students and student parents? After all the parents are paying the bill (even when it's indirect via taxes)
    - shasta 16y ago
      If you mean that a teacher's salary shouldn't be a simple function of test scores, then sure. If you mean standardized testing shouldn't be used to evaluate children, or that evaluations of students - even relative ones - shouldn't be used in evaluations of teachers, then can you please explain what you have in mind as the alternative?
pellicle 16y ago
If you want better teachers, you don't necessarily need to pay much more. What you need to do is make the job better, and you do that by working to remove the things that make teacher's lives miserable. Teachers already love kids and teaching. What drives them away is a long list of negatives: little support from administration (especially when parents are involved), overbearing and/or micromanaging administration, way too much paperwork, too many meetings, and too much weight put on standardized testing. Large class sizes doesn't help either. (And please don't tell me that teachers have summers off (technically, contracts end at the end of the year and start up again when the school year begins, so they are not employed during the summer). Teachers spend their summers doing professional development, getting prepared for next year (revising curriculum, tweaking tests/quizzes/homeworks), dealing with paperwork, recovering from the school year, and often doing something teaching-related for pay (running summer programs or summer school). )
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  Are you seriously comparing an easy 6 week continuing education course to full time employment? I'm really not sure why you think the job needs to be made better. Teachers already work less during the year than other professionals [1], get 2-3 months in which they need to work only a few hours (if at all), get incredibly good job security and defined benefit pensions. That's an incredible comp package which most people in the private sector would love to have. [1] http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf
  - loumf 16y ago
    The job needs to be made better in non-comp ways. I don't think the comp is enough, but the other frustrations are far worse. Many people in the private sector (who would be good teachers) could live with the less pay (in exchange for other benefits), but not the bull.
  - Retric 16y ago
    And yet the turnover is incredibly high for such a "cushy" job. If you look at the numbers it’s less expensive to retain more high quality teachers than it is to attract and train new ones.
adolph 16y ago
Summary: A new study finds that "[s]tudents who had learned much more in kindergarten" did better in later life. "The economists don’t pretend to know the exact causes. But it’s not hard to come up with plausible guesses." "Mr. Chetty and his colleagues ... estimate that a standout kindergarten teacher is worth about $320,000 a year." Voila, "The Case for $320,000 Kindergarten Teachers!"
jim_h 16y ago
Good teachers are undervalued. Education is valued, but they sure don't give the enough compensation to the teachers. Teachers need more recognition. It's not the institution that makes a school great, it's the teachers. Thank you to the teachers out there.
- dhimes 16y ago
  I've long felt that the best ways for teachers to get what they deserve is for them to open themselves up to real evaluation. Pre-test/post-test. Once this happens, the true stars will be able to command quite a premium. Although the teachers fear such a day, I believe the perceptive administrators fear it more because they will enter into bidding wars for the top teachers, and lose their jobs if they don't get and keep them. Perhaps the answer will lie in something like The Teaching Company attracting the best and brightest teachers and selling their lectures for the expository parts of instruction, and your average teacher will be reduced to a glorfied Teaching Assistant (TA).
chaostheory 16y ago
On Tuesday, Mr. Chetty presented the findings — not yet peer-reviewed I'd like to see the details of the study before jumping to conclusions. There are just way too many variables.
shizcakes 16y ago
A small thing, but kudos for the NYT for mentioning that the research was not yet peer reviewed. Too much 'science reporting' lately presents papers and other publications as sworn fact, often skewed in whatever direction the reporting body wants.
jteo 16y ago
People are rarely compensated fairly for their contributions to society.
bryanlarsen 16y ago
The fact that a teacher is "worth" $320,000 does not mean that the teacher should be paid $320K. If they were, then the teacher is capturing the entire $320K, and society as a whole is not better off at all. Instead this number provides an "upper bound" for the proper salary. A more reasonable figure would be 1/3 to 1/2 of the value they're adding. IMO, society should receive "most" of the value of a teacher. That still leaves lots of room to increase the salary of a teacher.
korch 16y ago
A thousand things advance, nine hundred and ninety nine retreat: that is progress. --Henri Frederic Amiel It's sad to think academics and education policy wonks are still struggling with the question of what is the fair market value of teachers in 2010? I'd bet two generations from now it's going to be common sense to say "great teachers are 10x more productive than average teachers, so let's incentive that behavior." (Hmm, doesn't that sound just like the conventional wisdom about another certain profession we all know about here?). Why is it such a struggle to realize that now? What absolutely kills me is that we have all of these super smart people dedicating their careers to this, and billions of tax payer dollars spent, and the education system that will eventually become the consensus is going to resemble the earliest modern education system in 19th century Germany/Prussia. (It's a fascinating history itself—the US public school system was originally designed as clone of the German system.) Oh and after incentiving and selecting teachers for teaching talent based on performance becomes the norm, here is the next question that the education system will confront: Are great teachers who get to spend one academic year with their students much less effective than even greater teachers who instead stick with the same group of students, and teach the kids for several years of k-12? After a million studies, experimental schools, and policy debates by people who don't even know what they're talking about, the new consensus will be yes, the greatest teachers are the most effective when they can become semi-permanent tutors for kids over longer periods of time. And then we will have arrived back at the original German system of grad-level teachers who are state-funded, private full-time tutors for small groups of kids.
isnoteasy 16y ago
I propose another reason aside of teachers for the results in The Tennessee experiment,Project Star. My hypothesis is that children learn of their classmates, not so much of their teachers. A creative mind can give their classmates a lot of things to play with and can make them feel happy and motivated while playing or learning. Perhaps some researcher would consider this a plausible hypothesis that worth to be tested. In Project Star you could compare the different groups with the same teacher, if there is not a global increase, it can indicate that the teacher is not the main factor, giving additional support to my (your, take it for free) hypothesis. Searching with google "children learn from their classmates", I found Montessory philosophy and ideas. So I refine the hypothesis: a Montessory style of teaching empower the effect of children learning of each other. So to summarize my hypothesis or explanation of the Project Star experiment: 1. Children learn of each other, this is the main factor. 2. Teachers have a secondary effect on learning. 3. The combination of factor 1) and 2) is empowered with a style of teaching such as Montessory style, giving learning freedom to learn of each other, collaborate, explore, and obtain self respect. This combination is the greatest indicator of future achievement in life.

37 points by physcab 16y ago

"Still, school administrators can do more than they’re doing. They can pay their best teachers more, as Pittsburgh soon will, and give them the support they deserve. Administrators can fire more of their worst teachers, as Michelle Rhee, the Washington schools chancellor, did last week." There is a gigantic elephant in that room with "NEA" painted on its hide.

jbooth 16y ago
Very true. But as long as the NEA and the unions are the only ones who stick up for teachers while everyone else wants to cut their salaries and assign them more work in the name of "eliminating government waste" (while leaving earmarks and military funding untouched, of course..) Anyways as long as they're the only one that actually sticks up for teachers then they'll have a place in the world. You just have to smack them around once in a while when they're totally wrong about something, like their resistance to the Obama admin's effort's at merit pay. EDIT: From the article, kindergarten being the most predictive grade is fascinating.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  ...everyone else wants to cut their salaries and assign them more work in the name of "eliminating government waste" (while leaving earmarks and military funding untouched, of course..) Argue with straw men much?
  - jbooth 16y ago
    Go take a look at a municipal budget over the last 5 years, pretty much anywhere in the US. It's not a straw man. State and local budgets have been strapped since 2002-2003 or so, all the way through the supposed "boom", and it got worse after the collapse. The stimulus bill, for example -- it was like 40% tax cuts, had a bunch of earmarks, but the local aid that would've helped teachers was what got stripped out in order to get the last couple votes. Congress can reduce the deficit by cutting state aid. States can balance their budgets by cutting local aid. School districts get stuck with the lack of funding from their congressman's admirable devotion to balanced budgets. In between voting for putting 2 wars and a $50 million senior center for his district on the credit card. I'm just giving you the truth - you can accept it or not.
    - yummyfajitas 16y ago
      I don't dispute that congress is a bunch of crooks. I dispute the term "everyone else" - most people who criticize teachers for being overpaid and underworked (which is uncommon) also criticize pork barrel spending.
      - jbooth 16y ago
        Well, first off, people who criticize teachers for being overpaid and underworked are just plain wrong. Teachers have a really hard job and it's one of the top 5 most important jobs in our whole society. Regarding my original point, that nobody stands up for teachers.. I mean look at that stimulus bill. Teacher pay makes up a huge portion and often an outright majority of local budgets. When local budgets are crunched, and it's either lay off teachers or raise taxes, guess which way the local populace usually goes? Everyone wants something for nothing.
        yummyfajitas 16y ago
        Teachers are certainly underworked relative to other professionals, even for the 9-10 months that school is in session. http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf They are also overpaid, particularly if you account for the value of all their fringe benefits, including summer vacation, tenure, defined benefit pensions, early retirement and gold-plated medical care (all of which are very expensive). In fact, they are usually paid right on the money if you look at salary alone - a 45 year old teacher with 20 years experience in NYC gets $83-95k/year (equivalent to $99-114k/year if they worked all year). That's not bad even for NYC. http://schools.nyc.gov/Offices/DHR/TeacherPrincipalSchoolProfessionals/Salary/Salary+Step+and+Differential+Schedules.htm http://schools.nyc.gov/Offices/DHR/TeacherPrincipalSchoolPro... It gets even worse when you realize teachers tend to be low human capital individuals, at least compared to other college grads. Most likely they would be below average if they pursued other professions: http://www.ets.org/Media/Tests/GRE/pdf/gre_0809_interpretingscores.pdf http://www.ets.org/Media/Tests/GRE/pdf/gre_0809_interpreting...
        16y ago
- Empact 16y ago
  How do you explain that while the NEA supports the firing teachers based on age, rather than merit - ejecting good young teachers while retaining old bad ones - while it's innovative charter schools that can go right ahead in paying teachers highly in hopes of attracting the best teachers: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/05/education/05charter.html?_r=1&hpw http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/05/education/05charter.html?_... Who is sticking up for teachers there? The NEA, which supports age over talent? Or the charter, which is focused on attracting and retaining good teachers?
  - jbooth 16y ago
    Did you read the comment you're responding to? I said they were wrong sometimes, specifically in regards to merit pay. I said that, in black and white, right there on the page. Or gray, because it's being downmodded because people who don't like the implications of it. Anyways, yeah. Charter schools. Whole other bag of worms. I like them in theory, in practice the way they're funded usually tends to be crooked -- quick example, in the town I was a Selectman in, a charter school started up. It cost us about 7k/year to educate a student, round numbers. Cost the charter school, say, 9k. Every student that left us for the charter school, 9k was taken from our budget and assigned to theirs. To add insult to injury, we actually had to pay to bus the kids there on top of it, plus additional unitemized strains on the police budget, etc. That's not exactly kosher.
    - jbooth 16y ago
      Oh, and as far as "why" they support age vs merit (in other words, "last in first out", youngest teachers go first in a layoff), it's because that's how all the union contracts are structured, and that's wrong, but NEA is a product of the unions. Not defending, just explaining. I'd love to throw the NEA under the bus - the problem is, nobody else stands up for teachers.
sprout 16y ago
The problem with this debate is that if you speak to most teachers, they agree wholeheartedly that procedures need to be in place to fire bad teachers. The issue is that they are very hostile to the educational administration establishment that has decided test scores are the ideal measure by which to base this. Test scores, while they are good at measuring some aspects of learning, ultimately tie teachers' hands and force them to teach from only state-approved curricula. Especially scary if you live in a state where Thomas Jefferson has been struck from the books because the board of education has an ideology to push, and is unconcerned with teaching truth. So if you ask most teachers, they support this sort of thing totally, and therefore the unions would too. But only if they receive assurances that standardized testing - an enemy of free thought - is a minimally important part of the evaluation system. Peer review is the ideal. Now, this obviously still brings charges of cronyism, and it certainly will create cliques of teachers, but only rarely cliques of bad teachers. And I think it's worth knowing that we pass a widely varied bunch of knowledge onto our children, instead of only those facts that are deemed convenient and useful by powerful cliques in the state legislatures.
- lutorm 16y ago
  This is the real issue. I have absolutely no problem with rewarding good teachers and sanctioning bad ones. The crucial question is how good and bad will be defined. Standardized testing is absolutely not the way to do it.
  - richieb 16y ago
    Perhaps we should ask the students and student parents? After all the parents are paying the bill (even when it's indirect via taxes)
  - shasta 16y ago
    If you mean that a teacher's salary shouldn't be a simple function of test scores, then sure. If you mean standardized testing shouldn't be used to evaluate children, or that evaluations of students - even relative ones - shouldn't be used in evaluations of teachers, then can you please explain what you have in mind as the alternative?

pellicle 16y ago

If you want better teachers, you don't necessarily need to pay much more. What you need to do is make the job better, and you do that by working to remove the things that make teacher's lives miserable. Teachers already love kids and teaching. What drives them away is a long list of negatives: little support from administration (especially when parents are involved), overbearing and/or micromanaging administration, way too much paperwork, too many meetings, and too much weight put on standardized testing. Large class sizes doesn't help either. (And please don't tell me that teachers have summers off (technically, contracts end at the end of the year and start up again when the school year begins, so they are not employed during the summer). Teachers spend their summers doing professional development, getting prepared for next year (revising curriculum, tweaking tests/quizzes/homeworks), dealing with paperwork, recovering from the school year, and often doing something teaching-related for pay (running summer programs or summer school). )

yummyfajitas 16y ago
Are you seriously comparing an easy 6 week continuing education course to full time employment? I'm really not sure why you think the job needs to be made better. Teachers already work less during the year than other professionals [1], get 2-3 months in which they need to work only a few hours (if at all), get incredibly good job security and defined benefit pensions. That's an incredible comp package which most people in the private sector would love to have. [1] http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf
- loumf 16y ago
  The job needs to be made better in non-comp ways. I don't think the comp is enough, but the other frustrations are far worse. Many people in the private sector (who would be good teachers) could live with the less pay (in exchange for other benefits), but not the bull.
- Retric 16y ago
  And yet the turnover is incredibly high for such a "cushy" job. If you look at the numbers it’s less expensive to retain more high quality teachers than it is to attract and train new ones.

adolph 16y ago

Summary: A new study finds that "[s]tudents who had learned much more in kindergarten" did better in later life. "The economists don’t pretend to know the exact causes. But it’s not hard to come up with plausible guesses." "Mr. Chetty and his colleagues ... estimate that a standout kindergarten teacher is worth about $320,000 a year." Voila, "The Case for $320,000 Kindergarten Teachers!"

jim_h 16y ago

Good teachers are undervalued. Education is valued, but they sure don't give the enough compensation to the teachers. Teachers need more recognition. It's not the institution that makes a school great, it's the teachers. Thank you to the teachers out there.

dhimes 16y ago
I've long felt that the best ways for teachers to get what they deserve is for them to open themselves up to real evaluation. Pre-test/post-test. Once this happens, the true stars will be able to command quite a premium. Although the teachers fear such a day, I believe the perceptive administrators fear it more because they will enter into bidding wars for the top teachers, and lose their jobs if they don't get and keep them. Perhaps the answer will lie in something like The Teaching Company attracting the best and brightest teachers and selling their lectures for the expository parts of instruction, and your average teacher will be reduced to a glorfied Teaching Assistant (TA).

chaostheory 16y ago

On Tuesday, Mr. Chetty presented the findings — not yet peer-reviewed I'd like to see the details of the study before jumping to conclusions. There are just way too many variables.

shizcakes 16y ago

A small thing, but kudos for the NYT for mentioning that the research was not yet peer reviewed. Too much 'science reporting' lately presents papers and other publications as sworn fact, often skewed in whatever direction the reporting body wants.

jteo 16y ago

People are rarely compensated fairly for their contributions to society.

bryanlarsen 16y ago

The fact that a teacher is "worth" $320,000 does not mean that the teacher should be paid $320K. If they were, then the teacher is capturing the entire $320K, and society as a whole is not better off at all. Instead this number provides an "upper bound" for the proper salary. A more reasonable figure would be 1/3 to 1/2 of the value they're adding. IMO, society should receive "most" of the value of a teacher. That still leaves lots of room to increase the salary of a teacher.

korch 16y ago

A thousand things advance, nine hundred and ninety nine retreat: that is progress. --Henri Frederic Amiel It's sad to think academics and education policy wonks are still struggling with the question of what is the fair market value of teachers in 2010? I'd bet two generations from now it's going to be common sense to say "great teachers are 10x more productive than average teachers, so let's incentive that behavior." (Hmm, doesn't that sound just like the conventional wisdom about another certain profession we all know about here?). Why is it such a struggle to realize that now? What absolutely kills me is that we have all of these super smart people dedicating their careers to this, and billions of tax payer dollars spent, and the education system that will eventually become the consensus is going to resemble the earliest modern education system in 19th century Germany/Prussia. (It's a fascinating history itself—the US public school system was originally designed as clone of the German system.) Oh and after incentiving and selecting teachers for teaching talent based on performance becomes the norm, here is the next question that the education system will confront: Are great teachers who get to spend one academic year with their students much less effective than even greater teachers who instead stick with the same group of students, and teach the kids for several years of k-12? After a million studies, experimental schools, and policy debates by people who don't even know what they're talking about, the new consensus will be yes, the greatest teachers are the most effective when they can become semi-permanent tutors for kids over longer periods of time. And then we will have arrived back at the original German system of grad-level teachers who are state-funded, private full-time tutors for small groups of kids.

isnoteasy 16y ago

I propose another reason aside of teachers for the results in The Tennessee experiment,Project Star. My hypothesis is that children learn of their classmates, not so much of their teachers. A creative mind can give their classmates a lot of things to play with and can make them feel happy and motivated while playing or learning. Perhaps some researcher would consider this a plausible hypothesis that worth to be tested. In Project Star you could compare the different groups with the same teacher, if there is not a global increase, it can indicate that the teacher is not the main factor, giving additional support to my (your, take it for free) hypothesis. Searching with google "children learn from their classmates", I found Montessory philosophy and ideas. So I refine the hypothesis: a Montessory style of teaching empower the effect of children learning of each other. So to summarize my hypothesis or explanation of the Project Star experiment: 1. Children learn of each other, this is the main factor. 2. Teachers have a secondary effect on learning. 3. The combination of factor 1) and 2) is empowered with a style of teaching such as Montessory style, giving learning freedom to learn of each other, collaborate, explore, and obtain self respect. This combination is the greatest indicator of future achievement in life.